Topic： Selection Models, Treatment Effects, and the Econometric Evaluation of Policy Design

Site：Maple Yuan 205

Time： March 20-23，6pm-9pm

March 24, 9am-12am

Introduction：

The course is an applied micro-econometrics course on treatment effects and program evaluation, covering micro-econometric methods and illustrating those methods though applications in health, labor, and development economics. Our starting point will be to consider treatment effect parameters when (1) the effect of the treatment varies across individuals; and (2) selection into treatment is possibly related to the idiosyncratic treatment effect. We then move beyond the conventional treatment effect parameters to consider the evaluation of alternative policies that would change the selection of individuals into treatment. We will consider alternative criteria for evaluating policies. Our focus will be on the evaluation of such programs using instrumental variables and selection models in the Marginal Treatment Effects framework, though we will also consider other approaches including matching, regression discontinuity, and RCTs. Various empirical applications will be used to illustrate the methodology. This course is a PhD level course.

Speaker

Edward Vytlacil is an econometrician, whose work has focused on the micro-econometric methodology for treatment effect and policy evaluation using disaggregate data. A theme in his work has been in allowing for the effects of a treatment to vary across people, and allowing individuals to have some knowledge of their own idiosyncratic treatment effect and to act upon that knowledge. In addition to his work in econometric methodology, he has published empirical work in labor economics and health economics evaluating the returns to schooling, the returns to job training programs, and the effectiveness of medical interventions.

Ed received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2000. He is rejoining the Yale faculty, having also previously been on the faculty at Stanford University, Columbia University, and most recently New York University.